Giuliani says he tunes out scrutiny

Rudy Giuliani says being New York mayor is a lot like running for president, from the need to articulate a foreign and economic policy to the persistence of aggressive news coverage that sometimes turns personal.

Giuliani, talking with The Politico ahead of Thursday's first GOP presidential debate, said scrutiny of his personal life and finances is old hat, and claims it no longer detracts from his enjoyment of public life.

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said on CNN last week that the personal life of Giuliani, who has been married three times, "is a serious problem" for his presidential bid.

"I'm able to put that somewhere because I've gone through so much of it," Giuliani said. "Being mayor of New York was, honestly, like being in a campaign every day. Conceivably, every day some difficult issue could come up, some personal issue could come up -- some legitimate one, or illegitimate one, or exaggerated one."

Giuliani, who in 1993 became the first Republican elected New York mayor in a generation, added that the city's diversity -- "every ethnic group, every religious group, every language" -- means a candidate there gets "used to campaigning in eight different contexts every day, from very, very urban contexts to Staten Island."

"I think the discipline of campaigning in New York helps a lot," he said, "in that you learn you can't give different messages to different people. In the city of New York, if you go to Staten Island, you've (got) to be saying the same things that you're saying in the Bronx. Well, if you got to Iowa, you've got to be saying the same things that you would say in California."

Giuliani pointed out that a changing news media enforces that discipline. "All the cable television, all the blogs -- everything you say is being sent to every American," he said.

Giuliani spoke to The Politico as part of a series of sessions with Republican candidates in advance of the debate, which is being hosted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in conjunction with MSNBC and Politico.com. Ten candidates have accepted invitations to participate in the debate, the first of the cycle for Republican presidential candidates. It will air exclusively on cable's MSNBC, with full coverage on MSNBC.com. The Politico will stream the debate live on Politico.com, providing an exclusive and unprecedented opportunity for viewers to ask and vote on questions via the Internet.

Giuliani said California's decision to move its primary up to Feb. 5 -- a date now called "Super-Duper Tuesday" or "Tsunami Tuesday" because so many states are voting -- means that his race "is going to cost a lot more money."

"California changes the whole way in which these primaries have to be looked at," he said. "You were looking at three states, basically, that would be the early states. Now you have California there. You've got Florida there. You've got New York there. You've got New Jersey there. It means we have to raise a lot more money -- early -- so we can contest. But I have great support up and down the state of California. From my point of view, I guess I'd have to say it's a really good state for me."

Asked if he thinks the nomination race will effectively be over on Feb. 5, Giuliani said: "It could be. Conceivably. Or Feb. 12 -- I think there are primaries backing it up on Feb. 12. If you're saying do I think this'll be over in about nine months, the answer's yes. So when people say it's early, it isn't so early. (He chuckles.) The Republican and Democratic nominee -- whether it's me or someone else, or Sen. (Hillary Rodham) Clinton or Sen. (Barack) Obama -- unless something unusual happens, we'll know that on Feb. 5 or Feb. 12."

-- "It is realistic to balance the budget," although he was not ready to say whether it could be done in the next president's first term. He said he spends "a lot of time now learning the federal budget.

"I'd have to go into much more detail with the budget, which I'll be doing over the course of the summer, and give a speech about this, and give you more of an exact projection of how we could do that," he said. "I have no doubt that I'm the most fiscally conservative in this race of the Democrats or Republicans. I ran a government where it was the most difficult to be fiscally disciplined and accomplished it."

-- His once-moderate views on social issues such as abortion and gun control have become more conservative since he was mayor. "My views may have been informed more by what I've done over the last six years, from the time I was mayor until the time I'm running now, which is travel to 35 countries and 95 foreign trips and 40 or 45 states. You get a better understanding of what everybody all around the world and all around the country is thinking. But basically, my core positions are the same."

"And when I change 'em," he added, "I explain it."

The former mayor said he "learned a long time ago that one of the reasons that I can do this, and get up in the morning very excited about doing it, is that I love campaigning.

"I love talking to people, I love being with people, I love debates," he said. "I like disagreement about ideas, because I think that's how you eventually end up with the right idea. I had an administration in which I would make sure that my commissioners had disagreements with each other so I'd get the benefit of two or three different sides of an argument. And I enjoy that and the interchange that goes on."